How long can you survive the post-apocalyptic wastelands of NEO Scavenger? In the near-future, supernatural activity and human warfare have fragmented mankind into pockets of civilization struggling to survive in wild and dangerous lands. You awaken alone in an abandoned facility with no food nor water, and only a hospital gown and some mysterious items as clues to your identity.

NEO Scavenger is a game where you must survive in the wasteland long enough to figure out who you are. Each turn you must decide where to go, how to scavenge for supplies, and how to deal with anything and anyone you encounter. And with each passing minute, the pit in your stomach grows, your dehydration worsens, your muscles tire, and your body temperature drops in the cold autumn air. Choose your starting abilities carefully, because they and your wit are the only tools you have in the apocalypse!

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I've just finished uploading new beta build 0.971b and demo build 0.971d. These builds include the new property-based crafting system, random skill selection, item identification, and several other fixes.

The biggest change will be familiar to those beta users who had early access to the 0.970t test build: the new crafting system.

New Crafting System - based on item properties, and with caution highlighting.

In this new system, the recipes will accept any item that fulfills requirements, not just the ones I've specified by name. So if you're trying to make a torch, you can use more than just a stick and a dirty rag. Crowbars and wrenches will suffice for the handle, and any flexible, flammable sheet will work as a torch head. Similarly, fire can be kindled with plastic bags, paper, and even clothes, so you don't have to rely solely on twigs anymore.

Furthermore, the crafting UI will show you each possible outcome for your ingredients at the same time, and they can be seen using the arrow buttons above the yield box (similar to switching pages in the ingredients or quick recipe area). This way, ingredients with multiple outputs can be controlled by the player.

Another big difference is that items like berries, mushrooms, and pills are automatically identified by players with appropriate skills. Otherwise, they use generic names. No more crafting required to identify most objects.

Finally, the crafting system now has different crafting times for each recipe, so most crafting attempts should take less than one full move now.

Also, the skills page now has a "Random" button, which lets the game choose your starting skills and traits randomly.

Changes to the Beta

In addition to the above updates, the beta has the following changes:

Changed isotope mine shaft encounter to be abandoned and resumed at each stage of exploration.

These are some great changes to the crafting part of the game. The way we can now use more than one type of item to fill a similar role sounds more realistic and i'm going to enjoy trying it out.

What bugged me about crafting was that if i ran out of turns while crafting i would have to go back to the map screen to 'end turn' before returning to the crafting screen to continue crafting items!
Is this affected by the new "Changed crafting to deduct turns based on recipe, instead of always 1.0 turns" fix?

One other thing i'd like you to consider is placing items in your campsite.
I'd like to be able to go : mapscreen -> campscreen -> drop items into camp, instead of mapscreen -> itemscreen -> drop items on ground -> campscreen -> move items from ground into camp.

The crafting and running out of turns is still an issue, though the recipes take less time each, so it should happen less often. There still isn't a way to end turns from within the crafting screen.

Re: dropping items in camp, that's still an issue, too. Though, does that come up often? The situation that I can think of is when I first arrive to a camp. I usually want to drop my sleeping bag, noise traps, etc. But that's a once-per-night thing, so it never annoyed me. Are there other items you're frequently moving between camp and hands/backpack?

I agree. They're actually on my wishlist, too. I'm not sure if I'll have time for a full companion system, but I do plan on adding some neutral and friendly wandering creatures. They may not offer much in terms of conversation, but at least they'll leave you alone, offer more targets to hostiles, and sometimes ally with you in a fight.

The other thing I'm looking into is non-lethal battle outcomes. Surrender, and looting unconscious creatures should change combat a bit, since it won't always be necessary to murder a creature to end the fight.